REVIEW: Leamington's new escape room a brain-teasing delight

Leamington's new escape room and its head-scratching puzzles were a lot of fun to try out.

Experimental Escape, between ShoeZone and Coffee#1 in Warwick Street, opened this month, and we were invited to come along and put our brainpower to the test.

The Machine - a snapshot of what to expect inside the room

Me and three of my colleagues were welcomed by David Billany and Charlie Little, who had spent the last two years getting the escape room ready.

Escape rooms usually involve being locked in a room with a certain amount of time to exit. Participants must crack all sorts of different puzzles to be able to escape.

Our room was known as 'The Machine', which gave us one hour to solve the mystery of a missing professor and his artificial intelligence machine.

We popped on lab coats to get in character, and set to work.

The room had plenty of things to interact with right from the outset, and it was difficult to know where to start.

We all started trying different things out, such as opening books and playing around with buttons, which eventually led us into clue after clue.

There were a great variety of puzzles, and every member of the team made important contributions to escaping because of this.

Some of the room's secrets were quite difficult to crack, but not unfairly so. Under the watchful eyes of David and Charlie, we were given hints at the right times, and most did not completely spoon-feed us the answers.

It was a gripping and challenging experience right up until the very end.

Sadly, we weren't quite smart enough to escape the room within the hour, clocking in at just over 66 minutes, so plenty of groups should be able to beat our time.

So if you fancy trying something different out with your mates, Experimental Escape is a great shout.